Joe Manganiello only met Smurfs: The Lost Village co-stars on promotional tour

Share URL

Actor Joe Manganiello found it "funny" not to meet any of his co-stars in new animated movie Smurfs: The Lost Village until they started their press tour.

The Magic Mike star voices the character Hefty Smurf in the family film, his first big animated project, and he really enjoyed the casual aspect of the recording process.

"You get to roll into work with your sweatpants on, baseball hat. It's the best job," he smiled on U.S. breakfast show Good Morning America. "You roll in by yourself, you knock it all out, and you get in your car and you go."

However, Joe admits it was a little strange when he finally came face-to-face with his castmates Demi Lovato and Mandy Patinkin at a United Nations event in New York over the weekend (18-19Mar17), because although they all feature in the same movie, they never actually worked together.

"I never worked with anybody else. It was funny," he said. "Demi and Mandy Patinkin and I all went to the United Nations to speak at the United Nations... It's International Happiness Day today and we were there to award exemplary kids who had kinda done extraordinary things in order to help the world become more sustainable, so we were giving away awards to these kids, but we were there and I'd never met Mandy, but we're in this movie together, which is very interesting."

Smurfs: The Lost Village also features characters voiced by Julia Roberts, Michelle Rodriguez, Ariel Winter, Rainn Wilson, and Ellie Kemper, among others.

Joe recently admitted he jumped at the opportunity to star in the new Smurfs project, partly because he wanted to make something his niece and nephew would be able to watch, as well as the kids he works with through the Pittsburgh Children's Hospital in his native Pennsylvania.

"I said yes because I was such a huge fan and watched it growing up," Sofia Vergara's husband told Robert Irvine Magazine. "I thought the character they (producers) described sounded like so much fun. I went through this period of my career where it was all adult-oriented programming - True Blood, Magic Mike.

"I do a lot of work with Pittsburgh Children's Hospital, I'm on the board of trustees, and the kids weren't ever allowed to see anything I was in. I would go to visit the hospital and all the adults would know who I am but the kids have no idea. And I have a two-and-a-half year-old niece and two-year-old nephew and I started thinking about wanting to do things that they could see and would enjoy. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to do that."